She Was Restless to Return to a Place She Had Never Been

So writes Pete Dunne about a first year peregrine's maiden migratory voyage, in his piece A Peregrine Going South. "She was restless to return to a place she had never been, but one she would know when she got there." That line has stayed with me since I first read it in 1995. I understood the longing to go, because I felt, and feel, it too. While in Pennsylvania, we lived directly beneath a waterfowl migration route and each spring and fall the skies were filled with Canada geese, snow geese and tundra swans, winging their way towards the, sometimes unknown, place that called to their wild hearts. "Take me with you!" my own heart cried, but, as I had had no wings with which to follow, I watched them soar out of sight, lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

I know that same lump of longing each and every time I read Edwin Teale's A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm, an almost irrational pull towards a life that isn't mine, at least as far as I can see. But suddenly, in a couple of days, I will be there...for a week. A week in which I may see not another soul, in which my company will be the field and woodland insects and birds, and the fish, turtles and frogs of their pond, and whatever mammals I see roaming the land. How I will truly feel on this land, I have yet to discover. Will I feel at home? Will I, as a friend asked, feel like an intruder? Will I have periods of fear, moments of elation? 

On Sunday, I will begin a solitary time without internet and superfluous interactions with the rest of the world. I will be blessedly beyond the reach of the media and the angst of the daily news, and beyond the angst of so many of my friends' reactions to the daily news. A passage from A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm comes to mind. Looking back on their first night in their new home, Edwin wrote, "Sitting there in the twilight, watching the fireflies and listening to the whippoorwill that first evening, we seemed to be in the perfect habitat for a pair of naturalists. We felt as comfortable as a rabbit in its form. Here, in every season of the year, we would be living on the edge of wildness. All these acres around us, all these fields and woods, fading into the night, would form a sanctuary farm a sanctuary for wildlife and a sanctuary for us."  

With much thankfulness to God for this wondrous opportunity, I will sit, in spirit, with the Teales, and smile and wholeheartedly agree.